Cisco may be getting the thumbs up on their Cius Tablet with their AppHQ and the recently unveiled Lexmark’s Mobile Print Application, which will enable easy-to-use mobile printing, but that can’t overshadow the fact that Cisco is facing a huge lay-off, letting go of up to 5,000 employees.

The lay-off will consist of employees willing to be bought out while others will be fired.  The lay-off is said to be the third phase in a three-part series to change the current status of the company to become economical once more. According to sources inside the company, “Cisco management is waiting for senior people to take their early retirement before doing the layoffs.”  Another  rumor we hear is that the number is actually over 6k people, when factoring the early retirement offers.

“[Cisco] must formally lower its long-term financial targets and set more realistic growth projections. Cisco has generally projected annual revenue growth in the range of 12 to 17 percent. It has averaged 11 percent over five calendar years.

“Cisco should level with investors, analyst Brian Marshall at Gleacher & Co. says, “and tell them to expect revenue growth of about 10 percent a year plus or minus three points, and also lower its projected operating margins from the 28-31 percent range to about 25 percent plus or minus three points.”

Cisco is out to prove to the tech world that the impending lay-off is what’s best for the company, with their latest announcements at the ongoing Cisco Live event in Las Vegas.  Some of the announcements include: exhibiting products based on Broadcom Corporation’s fastest CAN-based FCoE,  Nimsoft Monitor‘s upgrade to feature expanded coverage, and additional advanced capabilities for use with Cisco Unified Computing System(UCS).

More announcements are expected to be unveiled by Cisco until July 14, the last day of the 2011 Cisco Live! event.  Though many are awaiting Cisco’s revelation of their new innovations on networking and cloud computing, there’s only one announcement that everyone is anticipating (or should I say dreading?), the formal announcement of the 5,000 workforce lay-off.